


How Anne Met Tim

by gatcombepark



Category: British Royal Family
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 13:52:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2070747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatcombepark/pseuds/gatcombepark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne's recollections of how she fell in love with the man she now calls her husband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Anne Met Tim

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the first longer Anne-related fics I ever wrote, and it definitely has some major issues, primarily with the pacing of the plot (I highly doubt it took them less than a week to go from meeting each other to a full-blown affair in reality). However, I'm not going to do any further editing on it as I don't want to damage it beyond repair, which I probably would if I played around with it this far removed from the original writing.

I still remember the day I met Timothy Laurence. It had been a few months since I had found out about Mark’s indiscretions, and I was still feeling awful and lonely and very much in need of an opportunity to vent. So I decided to visit my parents for the weekend and see if they could offer me any guidance.

I was taking tea with Mummy when we were interrupted by a rather handsome young man. “Your Majesty, you’re wanted on the telephone. It’s the prime minister.” Oh, this must be the new equerry she had mentioned. Which means I’d likely be seeing quite a lot of him. Hmmm…

"Just when we were settling in. Oh, well, work comes first, I suppose. Anne, I’ll be back in a few minutes." Escorted away by the equerry, Mother left me to contemplate my dilemma over a rapidly cooling cup of tea. I really ought to be the bigger person and not pursue another man. But he was so attractive.. and it’s not like Mark would be missing anything, he’d barely touched me in months. Since Mark seemed to have no intention of trying to turn things around, surely finding someone to keep me company wouldn’t be an unjustifiable decision…

My reverie was interrupted by the equerry himself. “Ma’am?”

"Yes?" _Aren’t you supposed to be seeing to my mother?_

"It appears Her Majesty may be occupied with the Prime Minister for longer than she originally thought; she asked me to see if you needed anything."

"Not particularly…" I was much more interested in Mummy than I was in the tea. How much longer would it be before I could have her to myself?

The young man turned to leave. “Wait.”

"Ma’am?" He turned back to face me.

"I don’t believe anyone has told me your name."

"Timothy Laurence, ma’am. Tim to my friends." What a lovely voice he had. Smooth and golden; not too high or too low… With a start, I realized the silence had gone on a beat too long. _Say something! You won’t get anywhere with your mouth shut!_

"Well, Mr. Laurence, would you care to keep me company until my mother returns?" Where the hell did that come from? _Maybe you **should** just keep your mouth shut before you do something incredibly stupid._

"As you wish, ma’am." Reluctant to occupy my mother’s seat, he pulled up another chair from a nearby table and arranged it not-quite-opposite mine. I poured him a cup of tea and passed it to him, along with the cream and sugar; he declined both sweeteners and simply drank it straight. I attempted to strike up a conversation.

"So do you enjoy working for my mother?"

"Oh, yes, very much." And back to silence. I tried again.

"So you’re with the Royal Navy?"

"Yes, ma’am."

"I’m Chief Commandant of the WRNS."

"We appreciate your service, ma’am." This was going nowhere. What could I do to make him a bit more comfortable?

"You know, it _is_ alright for you to talk to me. I don’t bite. I promise. We’ll be seeing quite a lot of each other over the next few years and I’d certainly like to be on friendly terms.” More than friendly terms, perhaps.

"Yes, ma’am." Good grief. There has to be some way to get the man to talk.

"What did you do in the Navy before you were given the equerry post?"

He held my gaze for a moment. “I was in a tactics course in Sydney when I was asked to come here. Before that I jumped around from ship to ship, had all sorts of postings. I was even navigator on the Britannia for a while.”

"Well, do you enjoy it?"

"It’s the only life I’ve ever known, really. My father was a naval officer, and then he worked selling ship engines. I went to university on a naval scholarship. I’ve always enjoyed sailing and just being around the water, so I guess by extension you could say that I do enjoy my job."

Just as I was finally getting him to open up, my mother returned to the room. He politely excused himself and left us to our conversation. But I could no longer focus on her advice, even though it was the reason I had come here. I kept hoping that Timothy would return to the room and give me an excuse to speak to him again.

Sadly, it was not to be. However, I did receive a letter from him about a week later, the first in what was to be a long line:

_Your Royal Highness,_

_I’d like to apologise for my rudeness last weekend. I regret being as terse as I was. Please understand, I was rather taken with you from the moment I saw you and I wished to avoid saying anything inappropriate in my nervousness. I realise that you are a married woman and I won’t try to pursue anything; I just wanted you to know that I didn’t mean to be as distant as I probably came across._

_\- Timothy Laurence_

Well then. His confidence was rather astounding, considering all I had to do was show this letter to Mummy and he would be removed from her service and returned to a regular Naval post immediately. Of course, that was the last thing I wanted. I carefully hid the letter under some folders in a desk drawer and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper to compose a response:

_Timothy,_

_I think you ought to know that while I am a “married woman” per se, my husband seems a little unclear on the concept. If you would like to get to know me better, I can arrange to be in London more often over the coming months. But it is of paramount importance that you remain discreet in your comings and goings, as the press are everywhere._

_P.S. Call me Anne, not Your Highness._

On my next engagement in London, I stopped by Buckingham under the pretence of seeing my mother and slipped the letter to him on my way out.

* * *

His response was on my desk when I returned to Buckingham the next day.

_Anne,_

_I think I would like that very much._

_\- Tim_

Well, he’s always been a man of few words. Just then, someone knocked on the office door. Opening it, I found myself face to face with Tim. He must have been waiting for me to arrive so that he could come by to say hello.

"Do you… _need_ anything?” I smiled playfully.

"Just to see you." He smiled back. I took his hand and led him into the office, sitting him down in a chair opposite my desk.

"Not in the hallway. Someone might see us."

"Right. So how have you been?"

"Well, I was rather delighted to learn you were as interested in me as I am in you. It’ll be nice to have someone to talk to. Things have been so lonely since Mark…" I trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. The pain was still raw.

"Oh, Anne…" He was immediately at my side. Taking my hand, he gave it a squeeze. I responded by burying my face against his shoulder as the tears came. "It’s okay. I’ll be here for you."

(I didn’t know it at the time, but the man spoke the truth. His steady, quiet faithfulness has been the one constant in my life over the ups and downs of the past twenty-odd years. Even when our careers have forced us to be apart, his unique brand of tenderness has never been more than a phone call away. I’m not sure he always realizes how much he means to me, but I love him dearly.)

Finally, I managed to calm down and dry my eyes. Since there was really nowhere in the office where we could sit beside each other, I pulled him down to the floor. We sat, leaning against the wall, and talked to each other for what must have been hours. Glancing at my watch, I realized it had gotten quite late.

"Oh, goodness. I have to go if I’m to make it back home in time for dinner. But I’ll see you again?"

"When will you be in London next?"

"Two days next week, Monday and Tuesday. Perhaps I’ll spend the night here." _Perhaps you will, too._

He stood in front of me for a moment, seeming a little unsure of what to do. Finally, he raised my hand to his lips and gently kissed it. “Goodnight, Anne.”

I took both of his hands in mine, leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Goodnight, Tim. I’ll see you next week.” I turned and left the room, feeling better than I had in months.

But it seemed he couldn’t wait that long. Mark was away at a competition over the weekend with one of his students (who, in retrospect, he was probably shagging), and on Friday evening, the phone rang. I picked it up, expecting to hear my husband calling to check on me, as he was still at least pretending there was something left at that point. Imagine my surprise when it was instead the sweet tones of Tim’s voice, saying he was sorry for calling, but he knew Mark was away and oh he had just been dying to talk to me every waking moment since we last saw each other and…

"Calm down, Tim. It’s good to hear from you, too. How are things at the palace?"

"Well, your mother wondered where exactly I had disappeared to the other day-" I cringed. Oops. "- but I told her that something had come up with my family that needed attention and she seemed alright with that explanation. I haven’t been handed a discharge yet, so I guess that’s a good sign."

"Certainly, I wouldn’t want you having to go somewhere else where I couldn’t see you. I’ve only been away from you a few days and yet it’s felt like an eternity."

"Oh, Anne, it’s felt like an eternity for me, too. I’m so happy I was able to call."

"Don’t worry, in about three weeks the amount of time I’ll be spending in London will go way, way up. I just couldn’t change the engagements I already had scheduled without it causing a huge fuss, you know."

"But I’ll see you on Monday."

"Yes, and I can’t wait. We can walk around the gardens and I’ll tell you all sorts of little things about the place that only I and my brothers know…" The conversation turned to where we would go if we could actually date like a normal couple and didn’t have to keep it all a secret. I found myself feeling somewhat blue as I realized we’d probably have to keep it a secret for the rest of our lives. What was there to do? Even if I did somehow manage to convince my mother to let me divorce Mark, even if I decided that _was_ what I wanted to do, there was no way she or my father would approve of me shacking up with the equerry. Look what had happened with Aunt Margaret.

"Anne… Anne?" Tim’s voice cut into my reverie. He must have asked me a question. _Dammit!_

"Sorry- what? My mind wandered there for a minute."

"I was just telling you that I needed to go ahead and go."

"Oh, right… Sorry. I’ll talk to you on Monday?"

"Yes."

Hanging up the phone, I rolled over and fell into a rather restless sleep.

The next morning I was awakened by the phone ringing. Smiling at the thought that Tim was calling again, I reached out and answered it sleepily. “Hey, you.”

"Anne?" Holy shit. That was not Tim. I sat bolt upright as I racked my not-quite-awake brain trying to figure out what was going on. Finally, it came to me.

"Mark?"

"Anne, I called you five times last night and the line was busy on every one of them. What was going on?" _Oh no. Oh no no no no no no. Does he know? Or have a suspicion?_

"Oh… Uh…" _MAKE SOMETHING UP!_ “Sorry, I wanted to talk to Mummy, so I called her and we wound up staying on the phone for a while. You must have called in the middle of that.”

"Oh." He took me at my word, no questions asked. Well, they don’t call him Fog for nothing. "I just wanted to tell you… there are some people here who wanted to talk with me about buying a horse-" _Sure. You have another mistress to attend to, more like_. “-so I’ll be staying away until Tuesday instead of Sunday like I had originally thought. I know you had plans to be in London anyways, but I just wanted you to know not to expect me.” _What would I have expected from you if you_ had _been here? It’s not like we’ve been having much in the way of date nights or romantic candlelit evenings lately…_

"Fine. Thank you for telling me. I won’t leave the light on." It was cold, but I was annoyed. All of this trouble just so he could tell me exactly how much he still didn’t want to do with me? I was getting rather fed up. I wanted to be with Tim, and I would still have to wait the better part of three days for that. With an equally cold goodbye, I hung up the phone and went back to sleep for another hour.

After what felt like years, Monday finally rolled around. After I finished my third engagement of the day, I headed to my office in Buckingham to meet with my staff. What was normally a thirty-minute meeting dragged on to nearly an hour and a half as my excitement kept getting the better of my ability to concentrate. Finally, we finished with the last items on the agenda and I practically sprinted down the stairs and hallways separating me from Tim.

We had agreed to meet in one of the suites of rooms that wasn’t currently in use. Throwing open the door, I walked in, expecting him to meet me with open arms. Instead, he was nowhere to be found. “Timothy?” Nothing. Collapsing into a chair, I started to wonder if I had been stood up.

Then I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. Looking up, I saw him leaning in against the back of the chair, smiling down at me. “Where did you come from?”

"Of course, I run off to the loo for two minutes and you show up." Oh, Tim.

Feeling much better, I stood and walked around to his side of the chair. “Hello to you, too.” I reached up to cradle his face in my hands and leaned in to kiss him. It was getting rather late in the afternoon, and he had quite the five o’clock shadow scratching my hands and face. I tried not to imagine the stubble scratching me elsewhere and failed miserably. Oops. I pulled back, not wanting anything to get out of control just yet.

"Tim, I’m so sorry to do this to you when I’ve been here for all of five minutes, but my staff meeting went far later than it should have and it’s almost time for supper. My parents know I plan on staying tonight and they’ll be rather confused if I don’t come up to eat. I’ll meet you back here in about an hour and a half, alright?

Looking more than a little disappointed, Tim nodded his agreement and we went our separate ways- him back to his quarters to take his own meal, me back to my apartment to clean up. I’m afraid I rushed through my food that night and barely spoke to anyone else at the table, except to ask to be excused the moment I was finished. No one ever questioned me about it, though. I’ve always wondered what they assumed was going on.

I walked back into the unused apartment and immediately fell into Tim’s waiting arms. All of the anticipation that had built up since we had seen each other last was finally finding its release, and within minutes we were all over each other like hormone-crazed teenagers. I knew I couldn’t wait much longer, and I could tell that he couldn’t, either. As I pulled him towards the bedroom, he stopped me for a moment.

"Anne, I think I love you."

"I think I love you too, Tim."


End file.
